Canni Read online

  “Yes, Debbie Downer, medicine has come a long way.”

  “Camille died at thirty-two,” said Verde. “Monet painted her on her death bed. Compare the lack of color in that painting to the earlier ones. He felt guilty because as she lay dying, he found interest in the colors that death brought to her face.”

  “I saw that painting in one of the books. How sad.”

  “I don’t recall seeing that one,” said Edgar.

  “I’ve showed it to you, Dad. How could you forget that one?”

  Thip . . . thip . . . thip . . .

  “End of the record,” said Anita. “The better the turntable, the fewer convenience features. The mysteries of high-end audio. I have to lift the tonearm myself and put on another record. I’ll bring the Monet books out so you can show your father the painting.”

  “I can type Camille on Her Death Bed on my phone and get an image up,” said Verde.

  “The picture in the book is much larger,” replied Anita.

  Thip . . . thip . . . thip . . .

  “True. Monet deserves better than a phone screen.”

  “Also, the sound of that record stylus is making me bonkers,” said Anita. “I’ll be right back.”

  The squeak of the screen door.

  Thip . . . thip . . . thip . . .

  With Anita inside the house, Edgar touched his daughter’s hand.

  “I can tell she likes you a whole lot,” he said. “That makes your old dad happy.”

  He inhaled the pleasant, arid air, and decided he might just want another burger. He thought about getting up and tossing one on the barbeque himself, but Anita had such a way with cooking, that he’d surely fall short in some manner—even with a task as simple as pseudo-meat on a hot grill. The setting sun flickered through the fluttering leaves of the California Ash tree behind him. Its warm rays danced on the back wall of Anita’s home. She’d told him it reminded her of glittering diamonds. He thought more of the flaring bare light bulb that hung above his childhood bed.

  “We should bring her to the Getty Museum to see some legit Monet. She’d like that, Dad.”

  He leaned in and whispered, “But we always grab hot dogs there. She wouldn’t be too keen on that.”

  “You’re funny. They have veggie meals. I almost got one last time.”

  Thip . . . thip . . . thip . . .

  “I wonder what album she’ll put on next? Maybe Nirvana,” he joked.

  “I wish. Or the Pixies.”

  Edgar marveled at how his little girl wasn’t even born when most of her favorite bands broke through. He recalled taking her to see Weezer in Anaheim around the time of her eighteenth birthday.

  Thip . . . thip . . . thip . . .

  He reached down for his glass to finish that last smidgen of wine.

  That was when Dr. Anita Chuang came crashing through the screen door to kill him.

  She ended Verde’s life beside the toppled barbeque and the next round of burgers.

  MOHAVE COUNTY, ARIZONA

  “They aren’t fucking zombies,” she said. “They’re alive and breathing just as you are, asshole.”

  Not the lovely nothings one might expect to float from the mouth of a bride-to-be in the days before her wedding.

  Well, it’s not like she agreed to be married in Vegas, but he was hoping for it.

  “I’m sorry, Cash” he replied. “I wasn’t referring to your uncle—but some of those people around him . . . ”

  The uncle in question is the one who may have given her the nickname, “Cash”. She also doesn’t agree that ever happened, but he swears he heard it. He is her boyfriend—sometimes barely—and he was behind the wheel of a 1983 Malibu sedan, with Cash beside him, and her best friend, Teresa, in the back seat. They were all considerably younger than the Chevy, but old enough for a vacation in Vegas, with the possibility of nuptials slightly more likely than three 7s on the slot reels. Nearing the end of a week-long trek from New York to Nevada, they hurtled through the bleak night on a black strip of highway that, from far enough above, looked like a piece of thread dropped randomly in an enormous, mountainous desert. Almost two hours till a warm sunrise, and there had been no other cars for miles, not since some clowns in a dirty red pickup tossed a bag of Taco Bell refuse out their truck window and onto the road.

  Cash was still pissed about the callous zombie remark as they entered a little sliver of Arizona, on I-15, between Utah and Nevada. Her boyfriend’s given name was Winthrop, in tribute to a great-grandfather who was a tobacconist of some note. He learned early on that it was much too fancy and regal a name for a kid bumming around Brooklyn, so he took to calling himself Rob. It was his middle name—Robert. Cash’s real name, and the one most people other than Rob called her, was Caroline. Winthrop and Caroline. Could be a king and queen. But in the then and there, and for as long as the world would permit them to grace each other, they were Rob and Cash.

  “Calling them zombies? That’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever heard out of your mouth, Rob. And that’s saying a lot. They are heavily medicated.”

  Teresa remained quiet in the back seat, staring out the side window, taking in the dancing moon shadows of the desert and tweeting on her iPhone. Cash pulled up on the door lock button beside her, then, pushed it down again. She repeated the action a second time. Rob had seen her do this repeatedly during the road trip, had occasionally promised her that the door was indeed locked, but knew better than to offer any reassurances this time.

  He knew his foot was already ankle deep in his mouth, and he was formulating a meaningful apology in his mind. He’d tried to be funny with his “zombie” comment, but knew it sounded wrong even as it rode out upon his truck stop burrito breath. Cash’s Uncle Reg had been a New York City cop for 25 years. He was always kind to his niece, and the joker of what remained of her broken family. A steady buildup of plaque in his brain had changed him from a vibrant soul into a shell of his former self. So much so that he had difficulty remembering and identifying even those closest to him, and he found himself, though only sixty years old, in an assisted living facility. Rob had referred to some of the older patients as “zombies” for how they ambled through the corridors the last time he and Cash had visited—just before they left on their cross-country journey. Rob and Cash had been talking recently about how she earned that nickname. He said that Uncle Reg called her that the first time Rob met him, but she swore that no one had ever used that name before Rob.

  He tried to lighten the mood with a running gag that he usually enjoyed a lot more than Cash

  “Wanna start a band?” he asked with a grin.

  “What would we call it?” she answered robotically, with an obvious lack of gusto.

  “Rick Wakeman’s Cape.”

  “I don’t even get it,” she sighed.

  He was pondering an explanation, or an apology, when he saw the lights in his mirror.

  Cops.

  The red and blue illuminated the night sky and coated the mountains with color. The car approached quickly, but sans siren.

  “Damn it,” sighed Rob. “I wasn’t going that fast.”

  Teresa surfaced from her boredom in the back seat, mumbling about a pimple and closing her hand mirror. She turned her head to peer out the rear window. The interior of Rob’s Chevrolet had the look of a night club, or maybe, in this particularly old vehicle, a disco, as the lights streamed in from behind. The sedan got right on their bumper, and just as Rob began to pull over, it quickly crossed into the left lane to pass them.

  Relief.

  Rob looked over at the police car as it passed. They all did.

  Male officer driving, female cop in the passenger seat, facing backwards. A third figure was caged in the rear of the marked sedan, behind the steel-framed partition.

  Some type of bag over its head.

  The hooded rider was thrashing wildly, arms cuffed behind the back. The covered head smashed against the side window of the police vehicle just as it passed Rob’s car, f
racturing the thick glass.

  “What the hell?” was all Rob could muster. “Did you guys see that?”

  “Creepy,” said Cash.

  “Wonder what the one in back is trippin’ on?” asked Teresa, as she leaned forward.

  “But did you really see the one in back?” asked Rob. “Did you see the uniform?”

  “Huh?”

  “He was a cop too.”

  EAST ISLIP, NEW YORK

  The plumber had arrived promptly, just after the kids headed out for school. He was friendly and professional, and he promised to get Joyce McDougald’s kitchen drain clear.

  Stereotype, she thought, holding back a chuckle. This chubby fella is gonna fix what neither my coat hanger snake, plunger, or three containers of ultra-heavy duty, foaming, sizzling, industrial strength liquid gel acid rain unclogger could do—and here I am thinking of plumber butt jokes.

  His rump divider protruded from the top of his pants as his lower half protruded from the cabinet beneath her sink.

  “I’ll have this done in no time,” came his muffled promise. Joyce could see his arms moving and hear wrench-versus-pipe percussion. Sweat began to bead on his exposed back, like grease on an undercooked bacon slab. The thought of a droplet sliding down his cheeky crevice was too much, and caused her to turn, coffee in hand, to admire the refrigerator artwork of her twins.

  “Take your time,” she replied. “Just happy that you’re here!”

  The Long Island sun steamed in her kitchen window as Good Morning America could be heard from the living room plasma. She was a bit concerned that this workman would do what so many others had, and charge her more than the agreed-upon estimate, after discovering some “complications” during the repair.

  While studying her son’s Crayola portraits of various X-Men, she thought she heard the plumber sneeze.

  “Bless you.”

  No reply.

  She gazed down at all of the bottles and cans on the tiles surrounding the repairman’s feet; the stuff that would normally occupy the space under the sink; floor cleaner, furniture polish, a clear, label-less, bottle of smoky, topaz brown, mystery liquid.

  I really need to go through all this junk before I put it back in the cabinet, she thought, as coffee aroma filled her nostrils.

  Sounded like his wrench dropped.

  He was still for a moment; exposed back sweat droplets evolving into tiny puddles.

  Then his leg twitched.

  “You okay, sir?”

  Expecting to hear something like, “Yep, be done in a jiffy,” Joyce jumped when his legs began kicking about like a bullfrog on ice. The bottles and cans went flying in all directions, smashing and rattling throughout the sunny kitchen. She feared the worst, as grunts and growls came from beneath the sink.

  Oh God, my drain-cleaning acid spilled out of the pipes onto his face!

  She reasonably envisioned that particular scenario to be “The Worst”.

  It wasn’t.

  Good Morning America had gone to commercial. The early spring birds could be heard singing outside of Joyce’s quaint ranch home. They danced on the hedge that sat just below her bow window. A former NFL great blared from the television about how his aging prostate no longer kept him awake at night.

  In the kitchen, Joyce McDougald was already dead on the floor.

  Her blood snaked across the beveled tiles, gravity filling in the crevices like some grand design. It mixed with the spilled floor cleaner and smoky topaz liquid, and pooled up at the bottom of the refrigerator, below the X-Men drawings.

  MOJAVE COUNTY, ARIZONA

  Fifteen minutes had elapsed since the speeding police car had passed Rob’s old Chevy. They weren’t getting much reception on the car radio, so Cash and Teresa knew Rob would resort to the dreaded 8-track player. The decades old car, including the ancient tape deck, and the assortment of music cartridges, were all that the young man received after his drunken father fell asleep with a Camel in his hand and turned everything, himself included, to ash. Seems the only thing Rob’s dad cared about was that car and its V-8 engine, so it was in great shape, and like vinyl records—and maybe even 8-tracks—it was slowly transforming from a funny oddity in most people’s minds, to being rather cool.

  So Cash and Teresa couldn’t get Lady Gaga or Rihanna on the radio, but they did get the first album by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and the pounding anthem “Stayed Awake All Night”, which was quite appropriate. Rob sang along with every word, as he could to most any song in his late father’s collection. Scary thought for the two female riders: after several days in the Malibu, they were learning some of the songs too. They’d made a bit of a pact to distance themselves from the real world during this journey, avoiding radio news and not checking websites that could ruin their escape. Still, some news was just too big to avoid entirely.

  “I am so tired,” yawned Cash.

  “We’ll be in Vegas in like an hour!” replied Rob. “The home of the coolest weddings on the planet!”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Come on, you’ve even got your maid of honor in the back seat!”

  He turned back to Teresa, who flashed a sympathetic, heartfelt, and groggy smile.

  “I need to sleep, baby,” said Cash.

  “Well, our Vegas hotel will definitely be a lot nicer than the shitholes we’ve stayed in along the way,” he replied, as they approached a curve in the road.

  “That’ll be pretty sweet,” said Cash as her eyelids slid down. The 8-track was between songs, and brief seconds of nothing but soothing tape hiss blanketed the car as Cash rested her head against the window. Sleep called.

  The freeway sign read: VALLEY OF FIRE.

  “Holy shit!” yelled Rob, trashing the tranquility.

  Cash came back to life. Teresa leaned forward, her head coming between her friends.

  “Wha . . . ”, she whispered as she saw it. Rob shut down the tape deck.

  There, again, was the police car.

  It was off the road, twenty yards into the dark desert landscape. It had crashed into, and nearly uprooted, a Joshua tree. Smoke escaped from beneath the crushed front end that consumed the yucca palm. The overhead lights still flickered red and blue. A tractor-trailer was stopped at the side of the freeway, flashers on. Rob and the girls could see the truck driver sprinting toward the police car.

  “We’ve gotta help,” said Rob, as he slowed and pulled over in front of the semi. He looked at Teresa, “T, call 911.”

  She fumbled with her phone, “Where the hell are we, exactly?”

  Rob was out the door, Cash just behind him. They darted across the brush. The trucker was on the far side of the car, where both passenger side windows had been smashed. The air bags had deployed. As they were almost at the vehicle, they could see the truck driver opening the back door.

  The handcuffed rear seat passenger, with a hood over his head, and a cop uniform on his large body, jumped from the smoky vehicle, nearly knocking the burly trucker to the ground. His yells were muffled by the head-cover. There was no gun belt around his waist.

  “Settle down,” said the semi driver, in a southern drawl. “I’m takin’ that hood off, but them cuffs is stayin’ on, big fella.”

  Just as Rob, then Cash, reached the accident scene, the hood was pulled off. Rob ignored that, as he ran to the front seats. The officer behind the wheel was obviously dead—his head down at a difficult angle. What remained of his face was bathed in syrupy blood. His neck had been torn apart. The female cop, who had been in the passenger seat, was nowhere to be found.

  Cash hadn’t seen any of that, but she trembled nonetheless, as she saw the big cop’s hood come off. He was pale and sweaty, snot stringing from nose to lips, eyes bloodshot, with rusty caking around his mouth.

  Dried blood. Parched vomit.

  The stench of his breath smothered Cash’s nostrils from five feet away, but it was his eyes that commanded her stare. Sure, they were red, but Cash had seen swollen eye vessels and discolored
sclerae before, though never accompanied by such ghostly white pupils. Yet it was the brilliance of the red that kept her transfixed.

  More red than blood, she thought. Redder than fire or rubies. Her mind raced in search of a comparable color. Nothing seemed appropriate.

  Back in the Malibu, Teresa gripped her phone. A single car passed her window but continued into the early morning darkness. The bright lights from the idling tractor-trailer cut through the misty black and into the rear window of the Chevy.

  “I . . . I know we’re on Interstate 15 . . . not sure if it’s Utah, Arizona or Nevada. Wait, not Utah. We left Utah. I think it’s Arizona . . . ”

  Cash took another step back from the handcuffed cop as the trucker tried to settle him down, yet she still focused on those eyes. Rob emerged from the front seat and tried to scan his surroundings for the missing female officer. It was all red and blue from the police lights, but beyond that immediate area, only pitch-black desert.

  The big, sweaty officer finally formulated a sentence.

  “God, what have I done?”

  Cash felt wobbly. Her most recent meal wanted out.

  “Tell me exactly what happened, partner,” drawled the trucker.

  Teresa’s frustration grew in the Chevy.

  “I’m doing the best I can. Maybe I can use my phone’s GPS . . . ”

  Behind her, outside, by the trunk of the Malibu, silhouetted by the harsh lights of the empty truck, moved a figure.

  “You did all this here?” asked the trucker of the ranting cop.

  No answer. Moist, crimson eyes. Maybe a slight head shake.

  Rob grabbed the arm of the inquisitive driver as Cash looked on. He whispered in his ruddy ear, “Did you see the dead cop behind the wheel?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Looks like his throat is basically gone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” continued Rob, “I’m no detective, but I can’t see how this guy did any of this, while handcuffed, hooded, and locked behind a cage in the back of the car.”

  Cash was dizzy from the horror and the whirling police lights. She tore herself away from those eyes, leaned her backside on the crushed passenger side fender, and gazed out into the cobalt and crimson darkness.